Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Sixth Floor Carton Fingerprint Analysis

The Commission evaluated fingerprints on the four cartons found in and near the sixth-floor window. Three of Oswald’s prints were developed on two cartons, and 25 additional identifiable prints were found, along with others too fragmentary to identify. The Commission determined that warehouse employees who customarily handled the cartons left no identifiable prints. All but one of the 25 identifiable prints belonged to an FBI employee and a Dallas Police Department member who handled the cartons during the investigation, with one palmprint remaining unidentified. The presence of unidentified prints was deemed unremarkable given that the cartons contained commercial products handled by many people in manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping. The Commission also noted that the FBI does not maintain a palmprint classification system and relied on the opinion of fingerprint supervisor Sebastian F. Latona that people could handle cartons without leaving developable prints. The Commission concluded the foreign fingerprints provide no indication of an accomplice at the window.

Sixth Floor Employee Pre-Assassination Accounts

Two Depository employees were briefly present on the sixth floor between 11:45 a.m. and the assassination. Charles Givens, a floor-laying crew member, returned to the sixth floor to retrieve his jacket and cigarettes, saw Oswald walking away from the southeast corner, observed no one else, and left via elevator at approximately 11:55 a.m. Bonnie Ray Williams returned at about noon to eat lunch and watch the motorcade, positioned 20–30 feet from the southeast corner window near the third or fourth set of windows from the east wall. He remained for 5 to 12 minutes eating chicken and drinking soda, saw no one on the sixth floor (though stacks of books blocked his view of the east side), and left by elevator to the fifth floor, where he watched the motorcade with Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr. Williams left chicken bones and a soda bottle near his eating spot.